There have been a number of inventions with respect to automated and timed dispensing of pet food for pets like dogs and cats, as often pet owners need to feed their pets in situations where it is inconvenient/impossible, such as when they are away on a business trip, for them to do so manually.
Unfortunately, Unfortunately, the majority of those inventions only work well only for dispensing dry pet food. However, a large percent of pet owners and/or their pets prefer wet food since dry food contains very little moisture, which can lead to dehydration, dental problems, and jaw health issues in pets.
Almost all current inventions on market, which dispense wet food require the pet owner to open hermetically sealed commercially available pet food cans and load their contents into various compartments of an automated dispenser hours or days in advance of when the food will be actually dispensed to pets. For example, application US 20080289580 A1, S. Krishnamurthy, has pie shaped compartments into which up six servings of food are loaded prior to the device being potentially washed and reloaded. The instant the food is exposed to air its quality begins to deteriorate and may become unsafe for pet consumption over the next few hours, as exposed wet food is susceptible to bacterial contamination. Also open food attracts invertebrate pests, for example spiders, ants, cockroaches, flies, pill bugs, etc., which can infest food directly and lay eggs in it, and indirectly infest food with their larvae. Finally, open food could also attract mice, ants and create contamination problems in homes or apartment buildings where pets and pet owners reside.
To overcome the limitations of pre-dispensing food, others have reverted to opening up cans directly at the time of use. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,077,360, Anthony G. Figlia, the apparatus created is essentially reconfigured standard can opener that opens a can of food and then sends the can down a chute to the waiting pet. Not only is a can of pet food typically not designed to be directly eaten from, due to its depth and vertical side walls, but the sharp edges, produced using a standard can opener could tear a pet's tongue or skin around the pet's mouth and hence an opened food can is not safe for pets to eat out of.
At the extreme end of design, there is an application such as US 20130247829 A1, Taneja et al, which added a robotic arm to pour out the food rather than let the pet eat from an opened food can.
Therefore, there continues to be a need to be able to safely open up pre-packaged hermetically sealed pet food, when needed, without having to resort to robotic arms to do so.